Subscribe To The Sandbox of Doom

Explore the Sandbox

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Players Handbook

So I've picked up a copy of the new Players Handbook. Even a cursory examination revealed that this is NOT the "5th Edition" that some people were afraid it might be. However, I have to admit that I'm a little concerned about the $50 cover price - not so much because I think it's out of line for a book like this, but that it continues a pattern for roleplaying games of having entry-level products which are much more expensive than related leisure activities, such as Magic: the Gathering, etc.

It's also worth noting that you can get Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game, and Swords & Wizardry for much less than the cover price of this one volume. - and all of those are complete games; this is not. I've advocated for some time that what this hobby needs is a good $10 roleplaying game - and possibly the free PDF of the Basic D&D rules is supposed to fill that niche. We'll see.

My initial take on the rules is that they are well-written, with a lot of cautions about not thinking there is "one true way" of doing things. I've not read that far into the book, but I am cautiously optimistic about it, generally speaking. I retain my doubts that I would shift to 5e from Original D&D (or a retro-clone), but I suspect that I would enjoy playing in a 5e game much more readily that I did in the 4th Edition game I played in three years ago.

6 comments:

I feel like Swords & Wizardry is already a "good $10 roleplaying game". And there are lots of other ways to get similar basic, reasonably complete, rules for $10 or less, as long as you're talking about PDF. Do you mean $10 or less for a physical version of some kind, though?

They need to actually get Gaslight Press to revamp and re-release Everway and this time not try to sell it as a 'card-game'. I would think it could be done and be affordable and an easy to pick up and go learning curve too.